Known as a creator of astonishing images, stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson delivers a magnificent production of Mozart’s adaption of Handel’s Messias. Mozart was commissioned by Gottfried van Swieten to modernize the score fifty years after Handel’s popular composition (1742), mainly by arranging the wind parts and partially re-composing them. With Marc Minkowski a conductor has been engaged who understands perfectly how to combine baroque style with the tonal possibilities of an orchestra of the classical period like the Musiciens du Louvre. The excellent soloist quartet with Elena Tsallagova, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Richard Croft and José Coca Loza merges perfectly into Wilson’s enormous flood of images. “A complete artwork”, praises Opernglas; “stunningly beautiful” (BR Klassik); “A stellar moment for the music” (orf.at); “Timelessly beautiful” Süddeutsche Zeitung

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin continue their Handel trilogy with this recording of the last six concerti grossi of the composer’s Op. 6. Originally designed as attractive interludes to English oratorio performances, Handel’s concerti grossi soon gained fame as some of the most appealing orchestral music of the baroque era. With these pieces, written in London towards the end of his career, Handel paid tribute to the immensely popular concerti grossi of Corelli while simultaneously proving his mastery, incorporating all musical styles of his times into his work. The players of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, led by their concertmaster Bernhard Forck, demonstrate why many consider them the best baroque ensemble of today. The concerti grossi Op. 6 are concluded with this second instalment, and a recording of the concerti grossi Op. 3 will complete the trilogy. The ensemble’s first PENTATONE album, Cantata (2018) with countertenor Bejun Mehta, won a Diapason d’or. Their 2019 recording of the first six Op. 6 concerti grossi was hailed as “immaculately played … free of fashionable eccentricities” by The Sunday Times, while Klassik praised the ensemble’s playing as “eloquent”.

-----

REVIEW:

The group, by the standards of 2020, is large, but the ensemble is precise and quite impressive in the fugues and the other contrapuntal movements in which Handel attempted to outdo Corelli, his model in these works. These pieces are to Corelli what Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are to Vivaldi: dense yet brilliant takes of the form. These performances succeed on their own terms, and there is still plenty of life in this approach.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

HANDEL: CONCERTI GROSSI, OP 6

Also available on Blu-ray

During his years in Italy, Handel absorbed the music of his contemporaries and mastered new stylistic trends. Though the staging of La resurrezione was a memorable event in the Roman musical world, it was the production of Agrippina that marked Handel’s definitive investiture as an operatic composer. It met with enormous success and an unprecedented number of performances followed. Its melodic power is overwhelming and in his creation of credible and vivid characters, the alternation of recitative and arias, and sheer theatrical power, Handel established the template that was to last for the remainder of his operatic career. The production on the present release was filmed in March 2016 at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria, and was directed by Robert Carsen.

ECHOES OF LONDON JOHN WILLIAM

Known as a creator of astonishing images, stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson delivers a magnificent production of Mozart’s adaption of Handel’s Messias. Mozart was commissioned by Gottfried van Swieten to modernize the score fifty years after Handel’s popular composition (1742), mainly by arranging the wind parts and partially re-composing them. With Marc Minkowski a conductor has been engaged who understands perfectly how to combine baroque style with the tonal possibilities of an orchestra of the classical period like the Musiciens du Louvre. The excellent soloist quartet with Elena Tsallagova, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Richard Croft and José Coca Loza merges perfectly into Wilson’s enormous flood of images. “A complete artwork”, praises Opernglas; “stunningly beautiful” (BR Klassik); “A stellar moment for the music” (orf.at); “Timelessly beautiful” Süddeutsche Zeitung

The French mezzo-soprano Héloïse Mas, Classical Revelation of the ADAMI 2014 and laureate of the latest Queen Elisabeth Voice Competition 2018 is accompanied by a high-powered team comprising the London Handel Orchestra and Laurence Cummings in a magnificent programme of Handel arias. The main thread of these "Anachronistic Hearts" is woman: woman betrayed, abandoned, abused, desired, her emotions passing from joy to doubt, then from sadness to rage, resulting in vengeance, even death... Amongst all the great composers of opera, Handel was without question one of the most convincing with regard to the dramatization of these characters; from Poppea to Dejanira, from Alcina to Ariodante - not forgetting Lucretia broken by rape, these historic representations of women also enable them to be more readily projected into our contemporary epoch. And if one removes the original context, they open up inexhaustible horizons for forming a new framework, the emotional and visual dimensions of which are inspired by the music of Handel. The arias on this release are thus of absolute modernity, and the palette of feelings that Héloïse Mas brings to each of these characters make her first disc as soloist a feast for all listeners.

Beyond its musical riches, this medley of 1950s BBC radio broadcasts (from the Richard Itter Collection) opens a portal on England’s post-war Handelian revival. It is no accident that all these performances involve Thurston Dart, as harpsichordist, conductor or musicologist. His energy inspired a generation of musicians to explore neglected works by Handel and a host of other baroque composers, in a lithe chamber style more appropriate to their work than the heavyweight, orchestral grandeur favoured by previous generations. The efforts of Dart and other performers featured here paved the way for those more radical, ‘historically informed’ performance practices, which swept all before them in later decades.

“Claus Guth, who had already staged the Messiah at the Theater an der Wien in 2009, is exactly the right person to present the oratorio Saul, which dates from this period of upheaval in 1739...This could not go wrong with this highly sensitive director, who always listens precisely to the music. That it would work out so well in such a brilliant way, however, is one of the surprises that make you happy. In Vienna, where Handel is still one of the exotics of music history, there was breathtaking music theatre at its best." -Neue Musikzeitung

“Handel vividly, today, as a mirror of the metamorphoses of power.” -Kurier

“Florian Boesch as Saul is a vocal and acting elemental force, simply an ideal cast.” -Kurier

Is there another composer who can match Handel's genius for writing choruses? He is quite simply the master of chorus and on this compilation of tracks, taken from The Sixteen's award-winning Handel back-catalogue, there is much rejoicing. Revel in the some of Handel's finest writing from the universally loved Hallelujah chorus to the exuberance of I will sing unto the Lord from Israel in Egypt and the longest of his choruses - the magnificent The Lord our enemy has slain from the first version of Esther. Sit back, turn up the volume and marvel at his brilliance! Whether performing a simple medieval hymn or expressing the complex musical and emotional language of a contemporary choral composition, The Sixteen does so with qualities common to all great ensembles. Tonal warmth, rhythmic precision and immaculate intonation are clearly essential to the mix. But it is the courage and intensity with which The Sixteen makes music that speak above all to so many people.

After the album Bach, Little Books, harpsichordist Francesco Corti continues his collaboration with Arcana with a 2-album recording entirely dedicated to George Frideric Handel. At the center of the project are the eight “Great” suites. These masterpieces were the composer’s first published set, and are a clear testimony to his virtuosity at the keyboard. Their characteristically diversified styles reflect not only the mélange of national traditions assimilated by the young composer, but also his phenomenal improvisatory talent. Moreover, the attraction of these pieces lies in their melodic and rhythmic affinity to the world of singing and orchestral writing, Händel’s strongest interests. Arrangements of Handel’s operatic overtures and arias started circulating early in his career in England, and in his later years he was known to perform his overtures on the keyboard himself. Corti designs a program showcasing the composer’s brilliant treatment of the instrument, choosing to complement the “Great” Suites with a selection of transcriptions from Händel’s own hand and from his close musical circle.

REVIEWS:

It’s possible that Francesco Corti’s distinction as a conductor and a collaborative keyboard artist overshadows his considerable gifts as a harpsichord soloist. For example, whoever hears about his 2010 Bach Partitas released by Berlin Classics, a terrific “sleeper” edition if there ever was one? All this is to say that collectors looking for a reference-worthy harpsichord version of Handel’s eight “great” Suites should consider Corti. Although some listeners may take issue with the slightly distant and diffuse engineering, I find the sound quality attractively rounded, resonant, and warm, as if you’re hearing Corti’s 1738 Christian Vater model instrument in an intimate concert venue.

Certainly the sonics enhance Corti’s wonderfully freewheeling way with Suite No. 1’s improvisatory Prelude and excitingly boisterous Gigue. Suite No. 2’s opening Adagio and Suite No. 3’s concluding Air amount to a masterclass in how to organically integrate ornaments. Suite No. 4’s fugal opening Allegro attains bracing clarity due to Corti’s subtle agogic phrasings, while the ubiquitous Suite No. 5 “Harmonious Blacksmith” variations are more about cumulative build than facile virtuosity.

Despite Corti’s headlong pace for Suite No. 6’s Gigue finale, the rapid phrases have plenty of breathing room. And Suite No. 7 ‘s familiar Passacaille manages to convey both pomp and vulnerability at the same time.

Equally inspired performances of overture transcriptions flesh out this release. I especially love the imaginative registration shifts in Teseo’s Allegro section, plus Corti’s varied approaches to arpeggiating chords in Il pastor fido’s adagio opening section. For all of the thought and scholarship informing Corti’s interpretations, they consistently convey vitality, spontaneity, and forward sweep, without the least hint of self-awareness or pedanticism. Without a doubt, the title “Winged Hands” befits this fabulous release.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Semele is a masterpiece. For what else can one call a drama in which the perfect symbiosis of text and music conjures up such suggestive power? ‘To hold the mind, the ears and the eyes equally spellbound’: this recommendation by La Bruyère (Les Caractères: ‘Les ouvrages de l'esprit’) refers to the ‘machine plays’ so adored by the public in the Baroque period. But even without machinery or indeed without sets or real staging, Handel’s oratorio involves us in the tragic fate of his heroine with supreme skill.

Handel is one of Sandrine Piau’s cult composers, and everyone has vivid memories of her magnificent Alcina on DVD (ALPHA715): ‘Where once I portrayed light-hearted, pirouetting heroines, this new album offers a portrait of powerful, often wounded women.’. . . ‘Queens, sorceresses, sirens . . . we were attracted by the musical and emotional intensity of the hopes, disappointments and sufferings of these women, not forgetting the malice or cruelty that they also know how to deploy’, continues Jérôme Correas, the soprano’s longstanding musical partner and conductor of Les Paladins. With Almirena, Cleopatra and Alcina, Handel explores all the facets of these defeated heroines, whose boldly delineated characters live once more in Sandrine Piau’s passionate interpretation.

Includes arias from:

Lotario | Rinaldo | Giulio Cesare | Alcina | Amadigi di Gaula | O numi eterni

Plus movements from the Concerti grossi

REVIEW:

Sandrine Piau, not English and not even Italian, is arguably the greatest Handelian soprano of the day. She gets excellent support from the smooth historical performance group Les Paladins. She and director Jérôme Correas mesh beautifully. This all comes down to a magnificent artist at the top of her powers.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Il pomo d’oro and Francesco Corti present Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Armida abbandonata, together with two outstanding vocalists: soprano Kathryn Lewek (Armida & Dafne) and baritone John Chest (Apollo). Handel composed these two cantatas shortly after his Italian sojourn (1706-1709), and they demonstrate his acquaintance with and aptitude for Italian operatic music. Compared to opera, supporting roles are left out of these relatively compact cantatas, increasing the focus on the main characters, and heightening the expressive depth of their music. Il pomo d’oro performs these pieces with historically-informed ears, lively and colourful. The cantatas alternate with several delightful orchestral pieces by Handel, including several movements from his Almira Suite. Francesco Corti belongs to the most established harpsichordists of his generation, and releases his third PENTATONE release, leading the ensemble from behind the harpsichord. He works together with the multi-award-winning ensemble il pomo d’oro, who also recorded two Bach harpsichord concertos albums with Corti (2020 and 2021), as well as vocal recital albums with PENTATONE: Carnevale 1729 with Ann Hallenberg (2017), as well as Prologue with Francesca Aspromonte (2018). Kathryn Lewek and John Chest both enjoy a flourishing stage career, and make their PENTATONE debut.